Looking out: A saxophone

November 3, 1998
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Looking out

A saxophone

By Brandon Astor Jones

"Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations." — Carl Sandburg in Prayers of Steel

Sometimes it is the god of music bidding us to long for and miss people, places and things that have moved us deeply.

Prison can make men and women experts in longing: the time was 3:02am when I awoke, unable to sleep, because longing requires no sleep. Longing never seems to be exhausted enough to sleep. I began this writing with Sandburg's words because he once was Chicago's poet laureate and biographer.

Memory and fantasy had risen, and through them I found myself amid the early morning shadows of a place in Chicago's South-east Side. It was once very affectionately known as "Ye Ol' East Inn".

The late Eddie Harris often played there. He was a no-nonsense saxophonist. He spent much if not most of his time in studio work, providing background music for other, but not necessarily brighter, jazz stars.

He rarely played complicated or fancy riffs, just good clean crisp saxophone musically geared to the listener's liking. He is gone now, but not forgotten.

I miss the likes of Eddie Harris, his music, and many of the people who loved and love it. There is not much chance of my ever hearing Eddie Harris' music here, as this prison is situated in the buckle region of the so-called "Bible belt".

Nevertheless, my longing that morning somehow had quietly pried loose the confining walls of this cell sufficiently for my soul and spirit to slip through to freedom, where I could hear Harris' saxophone as it made musical love to compositions like "Exodus to Jazz" and "Chicago Serenade". In that fantasy emotional respite I was free, albeit briefly. The music was sooo good!

There is a sacred quality and beauty in the shrill refrain and often plaintive wail of a saxophone. It has the power and range to transport and comfort. Soprano, alto, tenor or baritone — it does not matter which. As long as the artist who provokes the reed's vibrations is talented, the core of my musical senses will race toward the freedom to be found in the music of the saxophone.

On that morning in that instant, from the white-hot forging of my heated core longings, the tongs of life lifted and laid me atop the anvil of my recollections, and there cadence and syncopation hammered and transformed me from an imprisoned sleeping ingot, into a rising, living, breathing, nocturnal musical instrument. I became the saxophone. In this space you are now reading my wail.

One's mind and one's music are wonderful escape devices in prison; without them, prisons would be little more than insane asylums. In the same year that Sandburg wrote the words that head this space, he also wrote "Jazz Fantasia". It reads: "Drum on your drums, batter on your banjos, sob on the long cool winding saxophones. Go to it, O jazzmen."

There will be readers, I fear, who will not have a clue as to what this piece is all about, and if that is true, I would like to encourage you to find a way soon to introduce yourselves to the wonder and beauty of the saxophone. Do not worry. It will not be a complex endeavour. Good music unlocks its own mystery the moment its pleasure is felt and heard.

Eddie Harris is gone, but the kind of music that he played lives on. Fortunately, the clean-spirited crispness of his style is found in the music of a young jazzwoman from the Netherlands. Her name is Candy Dulfer — appropriately enough: her style is sweet. I recommend the CD entitled Candy the Best of Dulfer. It will be like a gift to your musical soul.

Listen to it often for me, because it will never be included in the music that the prison's administration pipes into these cells.

There is something altogether graceful, not to mention sensual, in the sight and sound of a truly talented woman who is in absolute control of, and blowing life into, the emotional and spiritual crowbar that we call a saxophone.

[The writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He welcomes letters commenting on his columns. He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, EF-122216, G3-77, Georgia Diagnostic & Classification Prison, PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA.]

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